Mooninite (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) project

The guide to make your very own mooninite

Parts list

LEDS

80 green 10mm leds
105 blue 10mmleds
- Ideally you want diffused but they are expensive. We got our water clear 10 mm LEDS from abctronics.com $48.96 delivered for 150 blue LEDs and 100 green LEDs (we made 3 of these and paid ~$84 for 600 LEDs)

Resistors

46 100 ohm 1/4 watt resistors
1 680 ohm 1/2 watt resistor
- We just got ours from a local supplier

Power Supply

1 15v 1 amp psu wall wart
- We were able to use a linear power supply because its values matched closely with those of our array. We got our labtec PSU @ mpja.com $4.95 each.

Alternatively the supply can be purchased at allelectronics.com

1 2.5mm DC coax power jack (pc mount)
- Also obtained from a local supplier

P.C. Board Manufacturing

1 12"x12" Copper Clad Board
- You could easily get away with using a single sided board using wire jumps, if you can find one in this size. Luckily Mpja.com carries these hard to find for $8.95 each
Etchant (enough for ~300 sq/in)
- We purchased ours from a local supplier but mpja also carries some solid Ferric Chloride for $10.95 per pound.
1 1/16" drill bit
- We were able to drill the entire board with 1 bit but you may want to get more as they can break easily.
Photo Paper (at least 4 sheets of)
- We used Staples basic gloss photo paper. You can use almost any glossy inkjet photo paper for the transfer, this happened to be in stock and on sale.
1 Sharpie
- the sharpie resists the etchant allowing you to touch up the traces that will undoubtedly be messed up.
A laser printer to print the circuit onto the photo paper

Tools/misc

Drill Press (or a very steady hand)
Soldering Iron
Clothing Iron
Hobby knife
~13"x13" tub for etching (Or you can make your own out of cardboard and garbage bags)
1 yellow and green brillow pad (non metal)
Solder (preferably rosin core electronics solder)
Rubbing Alcohol

Building
Ok so you have all the parts to construct your 185 LED mooninite array using 46 strings of 4 LEDS in series with 1 100 ohm resistor and 1 extra LED and a 560 ohm resistor hooked all together in parallel.

Printing Design

I have already designed this schematic in Eagle and have made the printout into a pdf (see e so others can use it who do not have Eagle (or a full version of it). Be sure when you print the pdf that you print the actual size without scaling the pdf. Make sure that it is printing correctly by measuring the edge line and seeing if they add up to 12"x12" using regular paper.

Once you are sure you have the scaling correct print on the glossy side of the photo paper using a laser printer.

Cut the edges of the paper using a straight edge and an exacto knife so there is no excess paper around the edges of each of the 4 squares.

Transfer Design

Take the brillo pad and using the green side scrub the copper clad board to give the toner something to stick to.

Rinse the board with water, dry, and then clean with rubbing alcohol to ensure a good transfer of toner. Try not to touch the side you are going to transfer the circuit design onto as th oil from your fingers will make the etching go slower.

Figure out the orientation of the squares to one another (hint the ones with the x's near the corners go on the top) and place one on the copper clad board so its aligned with the edges of the board.

Prewarm you iron to the highest temperature setting without steam and once ready place ontop of the paper on the board. Hold the iron on top of the paper using pressure for a few minutes until the toner has started to transfer and then move the iron around the paper taking care not to shift the paper while using strong pressure. Due to the size of the board I found that ironing for at least 15 minutes on each quadrant is required to ensure a proper transfer. Make sure that you concentrate on the edges of the paper as they tend to not get as much heat and therefor not transfer well.

After ironing 1 quadrant for a sufficient amount of time you can remove the iron and place the board in a tub of warm soapy water and let soak for 10-20 minutes.

After Soaking you can start to rub off the paper using your hand or even a stiff bristle toothbrush taking care not to lift the toner off the board with the paper.

Make sure that all the traces transfered before starting on the next quadrant or if only a few traces are broken you can use a sharpie or a conductive pen later. If your transfer fails you can use the green side of the brillo pad to remove the toner from the board, clean, dry and start over again.

You then line up the next quadrant and start the same process again making sure that the quadrants line up with one another.

Once all the quadrants have been transfered you can use a sharpie to connect the quadrents and fix other mistakes that have likely happened in the transfer process.

Drilling

You now want to drill out all the holes on the board using the 1/16" bit. If you make some mistakes you can go over the holes using a sharpie to give you larger pads when you finally etch.

Its preferable to use a drill press but we had access to a portable drill press only so we had to make do. you could do this free hand but you need a very steady hand for when the bits get dull. we managed to get through 1 entire board using one bit.

Etching

After ensuring that all the traces and vias are still there and correcting with a sharpie you are ready to etch. You need some container to hold both the board and the etchant Please note this container cannot be metal we used a pizza box lined with 3 layers of garbage bags to get the perfect fit.

Place the board in whatever container you have and add the amount of etchant required for ~288 sq/in of copper. Adding hot water will speed up the process of etching. while etching agitating the container will also help reduce the time required to etch the entire board. Be sure to wear rubber gloves (this stuff stains) when working with the etchant and work in a well ventilated area and saftey goggles probably wouldn't hurt too.

Once all the copper has been removed you can take the board out and rinse it off and dry it. Using either nail polish remover or a brute force and a coin you can remove the toner from the traces. Make sure that you remove all the toner so your solder joints will be clean.

Soldering
Now you can solder in all those resistors and LEDs (I recommend doing all the resistors first and then all of the LEDs) The 680 ohm resistor goes in series with the lone LED in the right had corner after its transfered (looking from back the lower one with the curved trace)

We decided to do this board on one layer so we had to do some jumps which are denoted by red lines on the eagle schematic. and separate vias coming off the rails in the pdf schematic.

Check you power supply and dc jack to ensure the proper polarity of the LEDs before soldering them.

NOTE there is a polarity error in the series of 4 on the inner edge of the middle finger so be careful.

Testing
To prevent blowing out any LEDs I went through with a multi meter and made sure i did not have any trace jumps from solder, trace continuity along bot the negative and positive rail and then checked each series string with a bench supply.

Light it up
After testing your ready to use the wall wart. Plug it in and display proudly.

you can see the jumps as the red wires on the back

Finally done!

More Media
Pictures
Video

Printable PDF Schematic
Eagle Board File